Page 28 of Savage Little Secret

“He found out about the arranged marriage?” I ask.

Brendan nods. “We found out through an informant that we pay off for information.”

I narrow my eyes. “Who?”

“Evan Briggs on the Strip,” Brendan replies.

Of course. Loose-lipped bastard. Maybe I need to send someone down to the Strip to silence him.

“So, what was the big picture plan?” I question him as I move even closer.

Brendan sinks back into his chair, his shoulders hanging. “You’re trying to get me killed.”

“The Irish will already suspect that you’re dead. Maybe I’ll have you dropped off in the middle of nowhere so that you can run,” I tell him. “But only if you work with me.”

“You didn’t ask Cara any of this before you killed her?” Brendan replies with his brow furrowed.

Yet again, I let him believe the worst. “She spent weeks lying to my face about who she was. I knew I couldn’t trust her word.”

“You could’ve thrown her in here to take my place. She probably would’ve told you whatever you wanted to know,” Brendan says confidently.

“I wasn’t cruel enough to beat her with a baseball bat. Not when I have you here running your mouth,” I say. “Now, come on. Answer. That one little pill will run out soon.”

Brendan grimaces. “The plan was to destroy the Bratva from within. Attacking from the outside is risky. We wanted to reduce casualties on our side.”

“How was Cara supposed to destroy us from the inside? She’s one person who won’t kill anyone,” I reply with a shake of my head, not understanding.

“She didn’t have to kill anyone. She just had to turn you against the Suyunovs,” Brendan says.

My eyebrows lift in realization. “She pushed me to end the arranged marriage with Annika after listening to me rant about how I didn’t want to do it.”

Brendan nods. “She encouraged you to light the alliance on fire like she was supposed to.”

She’s good. Damn good.

And her own father doesn’t believe in her?

A small part of me is a little impressed. She was sly, but maybe she didn’t have to do as much work as she expected because I already had my foot out the door before she even came along.

She nudged me where I was already leaning. I didn’t want Annika. I wanted something else.

I wanted her.

“Cara said that what she did still wasn’t good enough for her father,” I say after shoving the other pill into his mouth.

Brendan swallows it down. Once he gets high on the opioids, he’ll have even less control over running his mouth. “Well, he wasn’t happy to find out that you fucked her.”

I’d imagine not.

“And she was close to you, so he told her to kill you,” Brendan continues as he starts to relax more and more into his chair.

“He expected her to kill me?” I ask.

“He can be an angry guy. That’s why she gave him the meeting location,” Brendan replies.

“She gave up details of the meeting after refusing to try to kill me,” I mutter to myself. She didn’t offer it up until she had to.

After considering that for a moment, I ask him, “Cara did tell me that you took a stack of cash from her. Is that true?”